Sheila Vemmer / Defense News Media Group Brig. Gen. Dan Allyn is deputy director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.

Brig. Gen. Dan Allyn, deputy director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, provided an overview of the strategic approach of the recently formalized Department of Defense Joint IED Defeat Organization, which was until earlier this year an Army organization. The organization is now under the direction of retired Army Gen. Montgomery Meigs, and is part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The organization’s focus is on the global IED threat, not just IED attacks against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Allyn told military and defense industry representatives April 28 at the 2006 Cruise Missile & IED Defense Conference: Joint Engagement of Time-Critical Air & Ground Targets, sponsored by the Defense News Media Group, in Arlington, Va.

IEDs are the No. 1 terrorist weapon used worldwide, he said. Terrorists the world over gather information on U.S. counter-IED technology from open sources on the Internet, primarily news reports, and disseminate that information very rapidly to devise new tactics and technologies to defeat American initiatives.

The military is in the process of standing up a new IED training school at the Army’s National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif. There they will educate troops deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan on the most recent insurgent IED technologies and tactics, and provide them with the latest counter IED technologies.

Once a unit deploys, the Joint IED Defeat Organization sends a training team that accompanies the unit for the first 45 days of their deployment. That training team is familiar with insurgent IED tactics specific to the area. The idea is to try and mitigate the steep learning curve for newly arriving units, and minimize casualties as the unit gains a better feel for the enemy’s tactics.

Allyn said the best way to defeat IED attacks is not to present any vulnerabilities that the insurgents can exploit. He said the additional armoring of vehicles and new counter-IED technologies have gone a long way to reduce those vulnerability gaps. His organization now focuses specifically on those remaining vulnerability gaps and what new technologies industry can come up with to seal them completely.

The military’s IED defeat strategy is focused on defeating the entire IED system, the insurgent network of bomb suppliers and makers, and the insurgents that emplace the devices. Taking down these networks requires precise, primarily human, intelligence.

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